ARTIST NEWS

Jeremy Denk Leads Family Concert at New York’s 92nd Street Y and Collaborates with Steven Isserlis

Celebrated American pianist Jeremy Denk continues his stellar season, performing recitals with star English cellist Steven Isserlis at the Eastman School of Music (Dec 7) and New York’s 92nd Street Y (Dec 9), before collaborating with Isserlis on two family concerts at the same venue: a Stravinsky-themed event led by the pianist himself (Dec 12) and an introduction to the life and music of Brahms (Jan 2, 2011). Denk just completed a six-state U.S. tour as featured soloist with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, performing Prokofiev and Grieg concertos under conductor Pavel Kogan. This fall also saw the release of Jeremy Denk Plays Ives, a landmark recording that underscores the pianist’s special way with the music of America’s pioneering musical maverick, Charles Ives; the Washington Post describes Denk’s authoritative Ives interpretations as combining “explosive power and sublime poetry.”

On December 7, Denk and Isserlis perform a recital at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. The program, presented in Kilbourn Hall as part of “The New Eastman Evolution” festival week, comprises Saint-Saëns’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in C minor; Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in G minor; and Isserlis’s arrangement of Ravel’s Deux mèlodies hébraïques, plus the second U.S. performance of Thomas Adès’s Lieux Retrouvés. Denk will also perform two Liszt solo works: Sonetto 123 del Petrarca (from Années de pèlerinage) and the Grand galop chromatique. On December 9, the duo will repeat this program for their recital at the 92nd Street Y.

Back at the 92nd Street Y on December 12, Denk will serve as guest artistic director for a concert in the Family Music (Ages 6+) Series, to which he is a regular contributor. He will be joined by special guest performers in a program titled “The Hardboiled Genius: The Life and Music of Igor Stravinsky.” On January 2, Denk reunites with Isserlis, now artistic director, for another 92Y Family Music concert, titled “Beauty and the Beard: The Life and Music of Johannes Brahms.”

Denk’s acclaimed Ives album

In October, Denk released Jeremy Denk Plays Ives on his own Think Denk Media label. The recording, helmed by Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse, features Charles Ives’s iconic Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” as well as the composer’s less familiar Sonata No. 1. The New York Times praises Denk’s Ives as “thrilling,” while the Washington Post affirms that this is repertoire in which the pianist offers “an entire world.” In his own extensive booklet notes – which another Washington Post critic praised as “the most interesting and well-written program notes [she had] ever read” – Denk writes of his attraction to this quintessentially American art: “It’s because the music is brilliant, inventive, tender, edgy, wild, original, witty, haunting… . Ives was raised in a world of hymns, marches, and ballads – mostly quite conventional music – and yet he was attracted to the wildest kinds of musical experimentation. He brought them together. ... Ives wants to re-create the raw experience of music-making, something unfiltered, and beyond all your piano lessons. …While driving me crazy, he reminds me why I play the piano at all.”

Jeremy Denk: engagements, winter 2010-11

December 7Rochester, NYRecital with Steven Isserlis (cello)Kilbourn Hall, Eastman School of Music